Posts Tagged ‘tolerance’

Often enough I get into discussions about this “border”, where something becomes “weird”. Mostly I have to explain myself:

“how come you don’t think this is weird, do you find this normal, would you also do it that way?!?”

and I’m like

“well, no, this may not be “my way”, but I can imagine, that some people could find that not “weird”, but just “their way”” or vice versa.

So after a while I get a:

“OK, it really could be that this other person finds this not weird, but it’s still strange, that he doesn’t find it weird, isn’t it?”

grrrr…

I find it really interesting, that it is hard for many people to imagine how other people feel about things and that it could be really different as the way they feel about the same things. This is actually kind of the foundation of our society – we all strive for individualism and want to be unique and special. And we are. Exactly because the things I feel and think are not the exact same things as you feel and think. Yes, there is some common ground – both can be categorizes as feelings and thoughts. For anything further you have to know a person really good and share some values and traits. So usually we peer up with people with similar interests, feelings and thoughts, because it’s only easier. But that doesn’t mean that other people don’t exist – they do! And they probably think you’re weird…

I am a feminist, simply because I believe that both genders should have equal rights and nobody should be discriminated on grounds of their gender. This is what feminism is actually about, in my opinion. But often I feel like it goes way beyond that.

Sometimes it’s about how you raise your children, how you dress etc. At least that is the feeling I always get from my feminist friends. Some are very tolerant, others not so much. It’s always really good, if your son doesn’t only play with cars and guns, but also with puppets and other “girly stuff”. Really the best is if your little girl loves blue, green or yellow, play with lego, cars and pirates and doesn’t even own a barbie. Little girls who play with puppets and love hello kitty are kind of… not feministic. Exactly like women who take the name of their husband after the marriage, or women who marry at all, or women who stay at home and prefer to be a full-time-mothers and “have it all”, or also women who dress like obviously really sexy (not classy sexy, just sexy) or even worse – girly…

This is kind of wrong, isn’t it? Isn’t feminism about not discriminating girls or boys, regardless if they play with puppets or cars and not about trying to simply switch the gender roles and try to make boys more girly and girls more boyish? Isn’t that leading to just another problem of the same manner, as we are not becoming more tolerant about personal choices, but simply starting to prefer and reward “not traditional” personal choices…

It’s just something that always comes to my mind when talking to some feminist friends… How do you feel about it?